Looking Forward and Practical Applications 203
social convergence and by signalling that the target state attained was in
Prince’s terminology inferable. Increment fi nal fall-rises were shown to
project that the attained target state contained a contextual implication
which the speaker projected that the hearer could unpack.
In Chapter 1 it was stated that Brazil (1995: 245) recognized that a fuller
description of the grammar must include a description of key and termina-
tion. This book demonstrated that increment initial key and increment fi nal
termination attached value not only to tone units but also to increments.
Increment initial high key labels the telling contained within a telling
increment as contrary to the previously generated expectations. Within
increments – and especially in increments containing an initial high key –
high keys tended to particularize the lexical items to which they were
attached. Brazil (1997) glosses the communicative value of high termina-
tion as inviting hearer adjudication but admits that in many instances such
a gloss is inappropriately precise. Instead increment fi nal high terminations
signalled speakers’ expectations that their hearers would do more than
passively concur with the telling realized by the increment. All other high
terminations were shown to add extra force internal to increments by
seeking an optional active hearer intervention prior to a point the hearer
recognized as an increment closure. In tone units with minimal tonic
segments it was demonstrated that, regardless of position within the
increment, the communicative value realized by the high-termination value
was signifi cant but the signifi cance of the simultaneous communicative
value realized by the high key was optional and could be overridden by
contextually generated expectations.
The description here has also expanded Brazil’s description by incorp-
orating low key and low termination into the grammar. Increment
initial low key was shown to project that the target state reached by the
completion of the increment was an elaboration of and not an extension
of the previous target state. Increment internal low keys projected the
equivalence of the intermediate/target states achieved by the production
of tonic segments within the increment. Low termination signalled a clos-
ure of a pitch sequence and in the data studied almost always co-occurred
with an actual or potential increment ending. The discussion of low
key and low termination in minimal tonic segments demonstrated that
potentially low-key and low-termination values can accrue in minimal
increments regardless of the position of the minimal tonic segment within
the increment. The actual presence of the low-termination or low-key
value is ultimately dependent on the expectations created by the context
and the co-text.